Tag Archives: mass

Coastal Antarctic Permafrost Melting Faster Than Expected

By Guest PostJuly 25, 2013Environmentandrew fountain, antarctic peninsula, Arctic, arctic like slump, austin, boston university, brown university, coastal antarctic, coastal arctic, david marchant, dry valleys contain, frozen water, garwood valley, ground ice, ice free islands, institute for geophysics, jaclyn watters, james dickson, james head, joseph levy, layers of sediment, lidar, marianne okal, mass, mcmurdo dry valleys, permafrost melting, phenomenon, present geologic epoch, retrogressive thaw slumps, ross sea, scientific reports, section of antarctica, tibet, university of texas, warming antarctic continent, weather station data

AUSTIN, Texas — For the first time, scientists have documented an acceleration in the melt rate of permafrost, or ground ice, in a section of Antarctica where the ice had been considered stable. The melt rates are comparable with the Arctic, where accelerated melting of permafrost has become a regularly recurring phenomenon, and the change could offer a preview of melting permafrost in other parts of a warming Antarctic continent.

Tracking data from Garwood Valley in the McMurdo Dry Valleys region of Antarctica, Joseph Levy, a research associate at The University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics, shows that melt rates accelerated consistently from 2001 to 2012, rising to about 10 times the valley’s historical average for the present geologic epoch, as documented in the July 24 edition of Scientific Reports. (more…)

Mussels Cramped by Environmental Factors

By Guest PostFebruary 22, 2013Environment, Natureautumn hurricanes, biodiversity, breed resistant, bungee cords, byssal threads, byssus, coast of washington, commercial growers, crabs, cramp, david garrison, emily carrington, environmental biologist, environmental factors, environmental fluctuation, fibrous threads, filaments, golden colored threads, hydrothermal vents, keystone species, laura newcomb, lobsters, marine food web, mass, mussel populations, mussels, Nature, ocean acidification, possible environmental culprits, rocky intertidal areas, science arena, sea anemones, seasonal weakening, spawning cycle, species, storms, stressor, typical summer temperatures, university of washington

The fibrous threads helping mussels stay anchored – in spite of waves that sometimes pound the shore with a force equivalent to a jet liner flying at 600 miles per hour – are more prone to snap when ocean temperatures climb higher than normal.

Emily Carrington, a University of Washington professor of biology, reported Saturday (Feb. 16) that the fibrous threads she calls “nature’s bungee cords” become 60 percent weaker in water that was 15 degrees F (7 C) above typical summer temperatures where the mussels were from. She spoke at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston. (more…)

Higgs Boson Discussion Launches UChicago Discovery Series

By Guest PostFebruary 20, 2013Education, Science17 miles, accelerator, aircraft, argonne physicist, atlas, calibrate, cern physics laboratory, circumference, critical mass, david logan center, detector, donald levy, elementary particles, fermi, gigantic machines, higgs boson, high energy physics, internet, Large Hadron Collider, lch, lightening arresters, louis block professor, marcela carena, mark oreglia, mass, national accelerator laboratory, particle, particle beams, patricia mcbride, physics, protocol for communicating, sterilize milk cartons, switzerland, theoretical physicists, time, tom lecompte, toroidal lhc apparatus, uchicago discovery series, universe, university of chicago, virtual audience, young kee kim

The long-sought Higgs boson—the particle that endows all elementary particles in the universe with mass—was elusive no longer when scientists at the CERN physics laboratory in Switzerland, discovered it last summer.

The July 4, 2012 announcement of the discovery appealed to both the general public and the media: Fifty-five media organizations and more than one billion television viewers made it an event that couldn’t be missed. Time even dubbed the Higgs boson “Particle of the Year.” (more…)

Secret of Scent Lies in Molecular Vibrations

By Guest PostFebruary 2, 2013General, Sciencealexander fleming, athens, atom, bonds, british chemist, bsrc, chemists, cyclopentadecanone, deuterium odorants, electron cloud, Greece, hydrogen atom, hydrogen musk molecules, inelastic electron tunnelling, lcn, luca turin, malcolm dyson, mass, molecular shape, molecular vibrations, nano scale changes, quantum mechanism, secret of scent, simon gane, spectroscope, ucl scientists, vibration of molecule

Molecular vibrations, rather than molecular shape, give substances their distinct smell according to a new study by UCL scientists.

In a study designed to find out how smell is written into a molecule’s structure, scientists tested whether changing how a molecule vibrates on a nano-scale changes its smell.

Molecules are made of atoms connected by bonds. The arrangement of bonds and atoms defines the vibration of the molecule. Chemists can therefore identify molecules by their vibrations, using a spectroscope. (more…)

Testing Einstein’s E=mc2 in Outer Space

By Guest PostJanuary 5, 2013Sciencealbert einstein, andrei lebed, atomic bomb, conceptual model, cornell university library, curvature, electron, energy, energy level, everything, explosion, galileo galilei, general relativity, gps navigation, gravitational field, gravitational mass, gravity, hydrogen atom, iconic equation, mass, motion, moving object, nucleus, object, paradigm in physics, principles in physics, proton, quantum mechanics, quantum objects, relativistic, Space, special relativity, speed of light, stockholm, theory, theory of gravitation, ua physicist, unifying theory, university of arizona

UA physicist Andrei Lebed has stirred the physics community with an intriguing idea yet to be tested experimentally: The world’s most iconic equation, Albert Einstein’s E=mc2, may be correct or not depending on where you are in space.

With the first explosions of atomic bombs, the world became witness to one of the most important and consequential principles in physics: Energy and mass, fundamentally speaking, are the same thing and can, in fact, be converted into each other.

This was first demonstrated by Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity and famously expressed in his iconic equation, E=mc2, where E stands for energy, m for mass and c for the speed of light (squared). (more…)

Texas Astronomers Measure Most Massive, Most Unusual Black Hole Using Hobby-Eberly Telescope

By Guest PostNovember 29, 2012Scienceastronomer, austin, bosch, constellation perseus, elliptical, Galaxy, galaxy mass, het data, hobby eberly telescope, karl gebhardt, lenticular galaxy, mass, massive black hole, massive galaxy survey, mcdonald observatory, Milky Way, neptune, ngc 1277, oddball galaxy, pennsylvania state university, remco, sun mass, texas, university, van den

FORT DAVIS, Texas — Astronomers have used the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory to measure the mass of what may be the most massive black hole yet — 17 billion times our sun’s mass — in galaxy NGC 1277. The unusual black hole makes up 14 percent of its galaxy’s mass, rather than the usual 0.1 percent. This galaxy and several more in the same study could change theories about how black holes and galaxies form and evolve. The work will appear in the journal Nature on Nov. 29.

NGC 1277 lies 220 million light-years away in the constellation Perseus. The galaxy is only 10 percent the size and mass of our Milky Way. Despite NGC 1277’s diminutive size, the black hole at its heart is more than 11 times as wide as Neptune’s orbit around the sun. (more…)

Scientists Prepare to Take First-Ever Picture of a Black Hole

By Guest PostJanuary 16, 2012Scienceabyss of space, albert einstein, alma, arizona, astrophysicists, atacama large millimeter array, atmosphere, black hole, black void, center of milky way, Chile, cosmic traffic jam, dan marrone, daniel stolte, dimitrios psaltis, earth, einstein, event horizon, event horizon telescope, extreme environment, field of gravity, game changer, general relativity, global array, hawaii, haystack observatory, maelstroms, mass, massachusetts institute of technology, mauna kea, mercury, Mexico, MIT, mt graham, nothingness, optical telescopes, plasma, radio telescopes, radio waves, shadow, sheperd doeleman, south pole, space and time, steward observatory, sun, supermassive black hole, theory of general relativity, tucson, ultra precise timing, universe, university of arizona, virtual telescope, water vapor, wavelengths

*The Event Horizon Telescope is an Earth-sized virtual telescope powerful enough to see all the way to the center of our Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole will allow astrophysicists to put Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to the test.*

Astronomers, physicists and scientists from related fields across the world will convene in Tucson, Ariz. on Jan. 18 to discuss an endeavor that only a few years ago would have been regarded as nothing less than outrageous.

The conference is organized by Dimitrios Psaltis, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, and Dan Marrone, an assistant professor of astronomy at Steward Observatory. (more…)

The new Revolutionary

By ShamsOctober 24, 2008CultureChe Guevara, Fidel Castro, hidden power, leftist, mass, President Bush, revolutionary, Saddam Hussein, third eye, weapons of mass destruction, WMD, yogis

When we talk about a revolutionary most of the time the image that appears before us is that of the Great Che Guevara. May be sometimes Fidel Castro. But that’s a long time ago story – now history.

Now we have a new (young) Revolutionary.

(more…)